Elisa - My reviews and Ramblings

Plan 9 From Outer Space is a film that’s so bad it’s good, and its quirky style is the result of the determined creativity of director Ed Wood. Even the death of its star, Bela Lugosi, did not prevent Wood from completing the picture—using his wife’s chiropractor as a stand-in for Lugosi’s remaining scenes.

Wood was a cross-dresser, notorious for wearing his girlfriends’ angora sweaters while on the job. He claimed that as a Marine in World War II, he had participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal while secretly wearing a brassiere and panties beneath his uniform. His 1953 film Glen or Glenda was based on the life of transsexual Christine Jorgensen.

Wood was depicted as basically a hetero transvestite in the brilliant eponymous motion picture, which was directed by Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp as Wood. Wood’s actual sexual orientation was considerably more ambiguous, with at least one biographer who knew him (Jean Marie Stine) claiming he had “homosexual tendencies.”

Stern, Keith (2009-09-01). Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals (Kindle Locations 12762-12770). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

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Henry Dixon Cowell was an innovative proponent of Modernist theory in music and one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. He taught at the New School for Social Research (1928-1963) and developed techniques of “tone clusters,” where the fist or palm is used to hit several keys at once, and percussing directly on piano strings. He wrote some of the first “aleatory” works, where an element of chance enters into each performance.

Cowell’s musical compositions include Tides of Manaunaun, The Lilt of Reel, Synchrony, Persian Set, Ongaku, and Concerto for Koto and Orchestra. Among his students were George Gershwin, John CAGE, and, later, Burt Bacharach.

Cowell, who was bisexual, was arrested and convicted on a morals charge in 1936. Sentenced to fifteen years, he spent four in San Quentin State Prison. There he taught fellow inmates, directed the prison band, and continued to write music, producing around sixty compositions, including two major pieces for percussion ensemble: Pulse and Return.

Cowell had contributed to the Eiffel Tower project at the behest of Cage, who was not alone in lending support to his friend and former teacher. Cowell's cause had been taken up by composers and musicians around the country, although a few, including Ives, broke contact with him. Cowell was eventually paroled in 1940; he relocated to the East Coast and the following year married Sidney Hawkins Robertson (1903–1995, married name Sidney Robertson Cowell), a prominent folk-music scholar who had been instrumental in winning his freedom. Cowell was granted a pardon in 1942.

Following his release, Cowell toned down his approach, and became notably more conservative in politics and music.



Stern, Keith (2009-09-01). Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals (Kindle Locations 3780-3790). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

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Jim Hulick, who coached Kristi Yamaguchi and Rudi Galindo to the national championship in pairs figure skating, died of AIDS-related cancer at 38 on December 10, 1989, in a West Covina hospital.

Hulick coached the pair for the last time at the prestigious NHK championships 16 days prior to his death, in Kobi, Japan, where they finished fourth. Complaining of fatigue, Hulick checked into the hospital upon his return.

"It always seemed like he blocked out his sickness for us," Galindo said from his home in San Jose soon after. "It was like he was living through us. I really do have admiration for him, to put all the medical things aside to do something for us.

"I'll never forget him standing there just before we would go out onto the ice and saying, 'Just go out there and have fun.' "

Hulick, a West Covina High graduate, teamed with Cynthia Van Valkenburg in winning the national junior pairs championship in 1971 and began coaching four years later. Operating in the last years from a rink in Dublin, Calif., he had about 30 students before learning in August, 1988, that he had colon cancer.

Although frequent trips to Southern California for treatment prevented him from maintaining a full schedule, he remained with Galindo and Yamaguchi.

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Source: http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-12/sports/sp-48_1_pairs-championship

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Mark Allan Takano (born December 10, 1960) is a Japanese American teacher and politician from California. A Democrat, Takano has served on the Riverside Community College Board of Trustees since 1990.

In November 2012, Takano was elected to the United States House of Representatives, defeating John Tavaglione in the general election. Upon taking office, Takano will become the first non-white openly gay member of Congress.

Takano was a member of the Republican Party through college, when he became a member of the Democratic Party. In 1990, he was elected to the Riverside Community College Board of Trustees and has served on that body since then. While on the board, he shepherded a measure that provided Riverside Community College employees with domestic partner benefits.

Takano ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives during the 1992 elections. That year, Takano defeated six Democrats in the primary election, securing the nomination in California's 43rd congressional district. Takano lost by 519 votes against Republican Ken Calvert in the 1992 general election. In a rematch between Takano and Calvert in the 1994 elections, Calvert again defeated Takano.

In July 2011, Takano announced he would run for the U.S. House in the redrawn California's 41st congressional district, established in the redistricting following the 2010 United States Census. He faced Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione in the general election.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Takano

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Patrick Kelly was a dancer and dance writer. A member of the corps de ballet of companies in Portland, San Francisco, and Cleveland. He died at Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan on December 10, 1993. He was 40 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was AIDS, said his companion, Richard Dworkin (Richard Dworking was the percussionist of Michael Callen).

Born in Portland, Ore., where he began his dance training and received a degree in nursing from Oregon Health Services University, Mr. Kelly danced in the corps de ballet of companies including the Portland, San Francisco and Cleveland Ballets. He also performed as the ballerina Doris Videnya in the all-male Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

Mr. Kelly wrote about dance for New York Native and Dance Magazine. He worked as a psychiatric nurse and supervisor at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was the founder and president of the Village Dive Club and Diving for Life, a national scuba-diving organization active in AIDS support services.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/13/obituaries/patrick-kelly-dancer-and-writer-dies-at-40.html

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Philipp C. Jung was a set designer for theater, opera and dance productions, best known for Broadway's Eastern Standard, Mastergate, and Closer Than Ever. He died on December 10, 1992, at age 43.

Jung died of AIDS complications at General Hospital in San Luis Obispo, where he had lived the past two years while teaching theater design at California Polytechnic Institute.

Among Jung's best-known work were the set designs for Broadway's "Eastern Standard,""Mastergate" and "Closer Than Ever."

He also worked in New York on "Major Barbara,""The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" and "The Madwoman of Central Park West," and on productions in Boston and Santa Fe, N.M.

Born June 10, 1949, in Cleveland, he graduated from Yale School of Drama and studied in London.

Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR102139?refcatid=25&printerfriendly=true

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Thomas Lee "Tommy" Kirk (born December 10, 1941) is a former American actor, and later a businessman.

Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor—Tommy Kirk was the wholesome, all-American kid in many of the Disney films of the late 1950s and early ’60s. When he got older he graduated to the lead in a number of “beach party” features, the genre of teen films set on California’s coast.

As Kirk said in an interview, “Even more than MGM, Disney [in the early 1960s] was the most conservative studio in town. They were growing aware. They weren’t stupid. They could add two and two, and I think they were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. I noticed people in certain quarters were getting less and less friendly. In 1963 Disney didn’t renew my option and let me go. But Walt let me return to do the final Merlin Jones movie, The Monkey’s Uncle, because those were moneymakers for the studio. In the 1960s all my social life was underground gay. It was my own life. I kept it separate from work, where I went on publicity dates with Annette Funicello or Roberta Shore.”

Kirk was fired from the John Wayne picture The Sons of Katie Elder after being arrested on Christmas Eve 1964 for possession of drugs. Although the charges were later dropped Kirk would go on to develop a drug addiction.

Kirk's acting career tapered off during the 1960s, hampered by the transition to adulthood, drug use, and "personal problems." Eventually he left show business, gave up drugs, and succeeded in starting his own carpet-cleaning business in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles.

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Stern, Keith (2009-09-01). Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals (Kindle Locations 7010-7017). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

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William Armstrong Percy III (born December 10, 1933) is an American professor, historian, encyclopedist, and gay activist. He taught from 1968 at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and started publishing in gay studies in 1985.

William was born to Anne Minor Dent and William Armstrong Percy, II, of the Mississippi Percy family. His mother was raised by her widowed uncle, the distinguished Memphis lawyer Dent Minor, scion of 17th-century settlers of those names in Maryland and Virginia. His great-uncle John B. Minor taught law at the University of Virginia from 1845 to 1895 and served for decades as dean of the Law School.

After graduating as valedictorian of Middlesex School (in Concord, Massachusetts) in 1951, Percy went to Princeton University, where he entered the Special Program in the Humanities. He struggled with the rejection and persecution of gays during the McCarthy years. At a time when conscription was still in effect, he volunteered for the U.S. Army. In his military stint, Percy studied Norwegian at the Army Language School. He worked as a French interpreter on loan to the Central Intelligence Agency on the island of Saipan.

Following the completion of his military service, Percy completed his B.A. in 1957 at the University of Tennessee. He spent a year obtaining a Certificato from the University of Naples. He went on to earn an M.A. from Cornell University, followed by an A.M., and in 1964 his Ph.D. from Princeton.

Percy taught at the University of New Orleans, Louisiana State University, and the University of Missouri at St. Louis for two years each. In 1968 he moved to the University of Massachusetts at Boston. After gaining tenure and promotion to full professor there, in 1975 Percy "came out" to colleagues. He joined the fight for equal rights for gays in 1982, and three years later began publishing in gay studies.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Armstrong_Percy_III

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Sometime you need serious, sometime you need playful… Poppy’s Pleasure is a pretty little story. Poppy is a cuteness overloaded character who is completely unaware of the danger he is for other men… not cause “he” is dangerous, but cause he can provoke an overdose of prettiness to the chosen companion. And I’m totally saying this with a positive perspective, it’s not easy to write a character like this one without falling into ridiculousness, but Stormy Glenn managed it without any stumble (maybe that is due to her experience with this character type).

Poppy is naïve cause he has always lived as a slave; he doesn’t have any memories of a previous different life, he doesn’t know there is any different life. Poppy truly believes the world is divided into Masters and slaves and that he is born slave and destined to be one. He is not a broken man, he still has a backbone, but he doesn’t know stubbornness, he doesn’t know rebellion, and so, most of the time, his attempts to escape that life always end with him being beaten and left half dead. The only lucky event in his life, for a reason that we will understand only later in the story, Poppy has passed from Master to Master with a contract that states he isn’t a sexual slave, and that he cannot be used for that purpose. So other than being naïve of life, Poppy is also naïve of sex.

Dean is on a rescue mission for one of his fellow Government Agency assassin, but instead of finding Marcus, he stumbles into Poppy and from that moment on, Poppy recognizes him as his Master, like a little duck with its mother hen, imprinting, and Dean cannot really leave him otherwise Poppy will have a mental breakdown. Dean becomes Poppy’s protector, lover, companion, and every other words you can imagine to describe a relationship that is more than love, it’s death or life.

As I said, sometime I need my overdose of cuteness.

Publisher: Silver Publishing (November 24, 2012)
Amazon Kindle: Poppy's Pleasure (Assassin's Pride)

Series: Assassin's Pride
1) The Cat's Meow
2) Poppy's Pleasure

Updates: http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rss/2156728?key=011e4dd0a1ff993d8c2322e691d6229ed9bbf74b


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Here is the Bestsellers List on Amazon I'm referring to for the challenge:

Bestsellers in Gay Fiction

And here is the actual situation (in bold the books I read with link to the review and marked as New the books entering the Challenge this month):

1) Ethan (Alluring Indulgence) by Nicole Edwards
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1939786177/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
2) The Backup Boyfriend by River Jaymes
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZYZYVK/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
3) Colorado Fire (Colorado Heart) by Sara York
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H311XXC/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
4) Inside Out by Andrew Grey
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1627982620/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
5) Blame It On The Mistletoe by Eli Easton
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GQHCBI0/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
6) Collide (Blackcreek Series) by Riley Hart
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GK9L2XO/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
7) Christmas Kitsch by Amy Lane
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1626490872/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
8) How I Met Your Father by L.B. Gregg
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GQ9IKCE/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
9) Stormhaven (Whyborne & Griffin) by Jordan L. Hawk
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1493759256/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:
10) Let it Snow (Minnesota Christmas) by Heidi Cullinan
Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E8FOLUI/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Review:

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End of December I will post the yearly list, and that will be the 100 titles I will challenge myself to read in 2014


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